Gunmen kidnap 25 schoolgirls in Nigeria region grappling with banditry
The early morning raid came a decade after the Chibok abduction that sparked the global #BringBackOurGirls campaign
Gunmen from a criminal gang kidnapped 25 people and killed a staff member in an early morning raid on a northwestern Nigerian girls’ secondary school on Monday, police said.
The attack came more than a decade after 276 girls were abducted from Chibok in the restive northeastern Borno state and sparked international outcry that rallied people around the “#BringBackOurGirls” global social media campaign.
Since then, there has been a string of other abductions involving schoolchildren across northern parts of Nigeria.
Police on Monday said the gang armed with “sophisticated weapons, shooting sporadically, stormed the Government Girls Comprehensive Secondary School” in Kebbi state at about 4am local time.
Police were deployed but “unfortunately, the suspected bandits had already scaled through the fence of the school and abducted [25] students from their hostel to an unknown destination,” police said in a statement.